Vacation Rental – What’s Under Your Sink?

Vacation rental – what’s under your kitchen sink? Vacation rental cleaning usually involves a turnover service. But if guests want to tidy up? Do they have the cleaning supplies they need under your kitchen sink?

In today’s #AskaHouseCleaner, Angela Brown shows you how to organize under your kitchen sink. Learn to stage and restocking tips for guests DIY cleaning. Guests clean up when they have the right stuff.

Listen: Vacation Rental – What’s Under Your Sink?

Watch: Vacation Rental – What’s Under Your Sink?

Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

Question: Vacation Rental – What’s Under Your Sink?

What goes underneath your kitchen sink in an Airbnb or a vacation rental?

Turnover Cleaning Tips New Community

This is a resource hub for Airbnb hosts, for the property managers who send house cleaners to the vacation rental properties. Or for the house cleaners who actually do the turnover service themselves. So, it’s a resource hub that has all kinds of different staging and cleaning information.

Now, we just started a brand-new community where if you have questions, you can ask your questions right there in the community.

And there are Airbnb hosts, vacation rental, short-term rental hosts that can jump in and answer your questions. And everybody can kind of network and share that information right there in the community. All right. So, if you have a question, TurnoverCleaningTips.com/community

Vacation Rental – What’s Under Your Kitchen Sink?

All right. Onto today’s question, which is from a vacation rental owner. He wants to know, “What am I supposed to keep underneath my kitchen sink, in case guests want to clean up?”

Let’s take a look underneath the kitchen sink, and I’ll show you everything that you’re going to need. Your guests will have the cleaning supplies they need to tidy up while staying at your place.

Hand Towel, Sponge & Soap – Top of Sink

All right. We want to make it easy for our guests. So, we’ll keep some kind of a hand towel for them to wipe their hands on when they rinse their hands off at the sink.

We also want to have a roll of paper towels, in case they make a mess so that they’re able to clean those up as they go and then just toss those in the trash.

Here we have a sponge holder that allows the sponge to air out. This way it won’t get moldy while it’s sitting on the countertop.

If you show your guests how to put stuff away and where stuff goes, most of the time they will return it where it goes.

All right. This is just regular hand soap, and dishwashing soap, and a sponge. That should be all that they need to do dishes and maintain the top of the counter space. Then, of course, they can just put dishes in the dishwasher and run a cycle before they leave.

Let’s Look Under the Kitchen Sink

All right. Now, we’ve seen what’s on top of the sink. What is under the kitchen sink? Let’s take a look.

All right. Now, all we want underneath the sink are things that your guests might use while they’re here. We want to remove everything else that a guest will not see or use. Now, real quick, while we’re back here, I want to point out a couple of things.

If you look back here at the pipes, you’re going to see that we have some zip ties, around the plumbing pipes. They are holding some plates that we’ve placed around the bottom of the pipes. This is so that mice can’t get in. We talked in another episode about mice infestation.

This is to prevent mice from coming in. So, we’ve covered and sealed up all the gaps and the cracks. Then we’ve put a zip tie down there to lock that in place, so mice can’t come through.

Let’s Take A Closer Look at The Clean-Up Kit

So, I’ve pulled out a tub from underneath the sink. This is a clean-up kit. I just want to give you a brief overview of the cleaning chemicals and supplies that we are leaving for our guests.

This will encourage the guests to clean up after themselves and to use these supplies in the event that they need them.

Also, it makes it easy for the inventory for either you as the host or your house cleaners as they’re restocking the supplies.

The first thing we have here is a bottle brush inside a mug. So that if you use it and then put it back, it doesn’t drip in the bigger tub. And the bigger tub is here so that it doesn’t drip on the surface of the under the sink wooden area below.

Stainless Steel Magic Wipes and Cooktop Cleaner

All right. What we have here is we have stainless steel wipes, and we have some cooktop cleaner. And then we have some dishwashing soap.

Now, the reason we don’t use our professional cleaning supplies is that a lot of them are not labeled for consumer use.

But if a guest goes under your kitchen sink, we want them to be able to know what the cleaning supplies are. Because if they have any questions, the instructions are on the labels on the containers. So, we use commercial grade store consumer products for our underneath the sink area.

Small Tub of Sponges

Now, we do have some SOS Pads here. I have two of them inside a zipper bag. The reason I have these is your guests may cook and if they have burned gunk on the pans, they will need these.

We have a non-scratch scrub sponge, and we also have an eraser sponge.

The reason that I have these here is not to say that the guests have to clean. But I’ve stayed in lots of homes and like to clean up when I’m done. If they make finding the cleaning supplies easy, many people will clean up after themselves.

Dishwasher Pods & Extra Hand / Dish Towels

I have a little tub here with three nuggets of dishwasher pods. Three is a good number. I don’t know many guests that are going to do more than three loads of dishes while they’re at your place. But if they’re here for a couple of weeks and they need more, this is a starter pack. They can go to the grocery, and they can buy more if they need them. Also, this gives them some to encourage them to do dishes.

In this larger bin I have some extra terry clothes that they can use in case they make a mess. Or if there’s a spill of some sort, or if they need an extra hand towel or two. We have several here that they’re welcome to use. Again, it makes inventorying these items easy.

Little Bins Inside Bigger Bins – Great Organization

The sponges go back inside the small bin. The bottle brush goes inside the mug. The smaller bins are in the larger bin to prevent dripping and leakage of soap or water.

Having everything set up just so allows for quick inventory for you and the guests.

NOTE: The house cleaner doing the turnover service doesn’t use any of these supplies while cleaning. He has his own supplies. The homeowner when staying on site doesn’t use any of these supplies either. These are for the guests and if the guests don’t use them; the bins are ready for the next guest that comes.

All right. So, that’s what we have underneath our kitchen sink. What do you recommend, or did we leave anything out? This is a chance for you to show and tell or share and tell and leave your comments in the notes below. All right. If this was helpful to you, please pass it onto a friend. Until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.

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